Spider-Man: Reboots are Boring

I grabbed The Amazing Spider-Man at the library the other day and finally got around to watching it. It came out last summer and is a reboot of the Spider-Man series. For those not in the know (i.e., me) it stars Andrew Garfield (who?) instead of Tobey Maguire. Basically swapping one geek for another (Garfield had a role in The Social Network playing the techie geek who got screwed out of Facebook).

I’m not a big fan of Spider-Man, but it’s another super hero movie and those can be fun.

Instead it was tired. It was the same story we saw in 2002’s Spider-Man, same origin story, same speech from his uncle about responsibility (though they were very careful not to use the oft-quoted line “with great power comes great responsibility”), same New Yorkers that came to Spider-Man’s rescue at a critical moment (a bit of post-9/11 over-reaction back in 2002, at least this time it had a motivation rooted in the story).

I know Hollywood is in love with the remake, that it’s easy box office money and sometimes that can be fun. Sometimes you do need to dust off something that was done a long time ago and revisit it for a new generation with new effects and a different spin. But a mere decade later? With practically the same approach?

Meh.

I love stories. But why do we have to keep telling the same ones over and over again? At least take the story somewhere new. Sing a new song. Explore some new territory. Make a new myth. I get tired of reading my kids the same story over and over again, and I get tired of watching the same movie over and over again, even if it’s in a slightly new skin.

And yes, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is now filming, to come out in 2014.

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The personal site of Kevin D. Hendricks: 50% ideas I can’t get out of my head, 40% cool causes, projects and stories I want to share, and 10% stuff. Since 1998. Kevin is a writer and editor with his company, Monkey Outta Nowhere, in St. Paul, Minn.